


The Good-Morrow

by emjee (MerryHeart)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Crowley is a flirty drunk, Drunk flirting, Early Modern Poetry, Heavy Drinking, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Post-Apocalypse, Pre-Relationship, early modern sex puns, early modern slang, john donne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 02:21:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerryHeart/pseuds/emjee
Summary: The Arrangement was still so new, and he’d gone and taken this fresh, delicate understanding and offered it wine and a new Donne poem, two things guaranteed to inspire deep and ill-advised horniness in most humans. Also, apparently, in at least two eternal beings.Or, John Donne has a poem for everything and they're all annoyingly applicable to Aziraphale's life.





	The Good-Morrow

**Author's Note:**

> "Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,  
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time."
> 
> John Donne, "The Sun Rising"

_London, 16—_

“Let me see,” Crowley giggled, leaning his entire body across Aziraphale’s in an attempt to snatch the paper from his hand.

“Patience is a virtue,” replied Aziraphale, holding the page as far away from Crowley as he could manage.

“Demon, darling,” Crowley reminded him, and took another deep draught of wine.

Aziraphale could feel his cheeks going pink “You’re absolutely cup-shot.”

“No one says that anymore, angel, now all the youths say ‘soused’.”

“Well, you are.”

“And again, I say: demon. Are you done with the blasted poem?”

“Yes, fine, take it.” Aziraphale slapped the paper against Crowley’s chest. Crowley put his own hand over Aziraphale’s and let it rest there for a moment, maintaining both direct eye contact and an infuriating half-smirk, before slipping the paper out from under Aziraphale’s fingers.

Crowley gave a snort of laughter before he’d even finished the first stanza. Heaven, he was glorious by candlelight. Long fingers toying with his wine cup, that long red hair, those perfect red lips—

This had all been a terrible idea, Aziraphale realized. The Arrangement was still so new, by their standards—they were, after all, creatures who dealt in centuries the way humans dealt in decades. And he’d gone and taken this fresh, delicate understanding and offered it wine and a new Donne poem, two things guaranteed to inspire deep and ill-advised horniness in most humans.

Also, apparently, in at least two eternal beings.

And by all that was holy, Crowley was a flirtatious drunk.

Aziraphale drained his glass while Crowley was occupied with the poem. It took quite a lot of alcohol to get them _soused_, but coin was no object and he fully intended to keep up with his companion.

If wine made Crowley like this…

Aziraphale stared into the bottom of his glass—linear thought was already becoming a slippery concept—and tried to remember if they’d gotten truly drunk before, together. They had to have had alcohol, it was generally the only safe thing, for the humans at least, and wasn’t it incumbent upon them to blend in as well as possible? Surely…surely if they’d been drunk before, if Crowley had been like this, he’d _remember._

“What a bloody genius.”

“Spot the bit in the first stanza, did you?”

“’S going to be hilarious if they ever print it. _It fucked me first—_”

“_—and now fucks thee!_” They dissolved into fit of laughter that lasted nearly a minute and ended with Aziraphale wiping his eyes and sitting up very suddenly to say, “Don’t go getting any ideas, he’s one of ours.”

“One can _admire _from _afar,_ angel, I am capable of _restraint_.”

“And you said you were a demon.”

“Off-duty, tonight.”

“I thought evil never slept.”

“Not in a general sense, but have you ever settled down into a nice feather bed and just let yourself black out? Cannot recommend it highly enough.”

_I’d settle down into a nice feather bed with you_, Aziraphale found himself thinking, entirely without his own permission. _I’d push you down and wind that beautiful red hair around my fingers and find out exactly what noises you make when—_

Oh dear, this was _entirely _uncalled for.

“What does your side think,” said Crowley, a hiss escaping his lips—_I could bite those lips_, thought Aziraphale, _I could catch his bottom lip between my teeth and suck it into my mouth and find out what he tastes like, what his mouth tastes like at least_—“about how eager he seems to put the devil in hell?”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. “Very pleased, I should think, since that is where the devil belongs.”

“_Sex_, angel, I’m talking about _sex_.”

“Good Lord, is that what they call it now?”

“They call it many things. They always have.”

Aziraphale was simultaneously too drunk for this conversation and not nearly drunk enough. “Well I don’t think Upstairs is particularly fussed about it.”

“Really? Thought your people invented sexual shame.” The hiss was growing more pronounced.

“We absolutely did not! I always thought that was you!”

“Us!”

“Of course! Only the forces of Hell would seek to pervert the gift of—of love, make people feel badly about bodily expressions of it.”

“Why would we want people to feel bad about it? Then they might stop doing it! And lovely as it for all the right reasons, so I’m told, plenty of humans do it for all the wrong ones, and then they come to us. And don’t get sanct—sanctem—dammit, _uppity _with me, your side absolutely thrives on showing the humans a good time and then telling them not to do it.”

“That was _one time—_”

“And it _fucked everything_—”

“Yes, alright, I remember, I was there!” Aziraphale reached for the wine bottle and refilled both his own cup and Crowley’s. “So if your side didn’t invent—sexual—shame, and it wasn’t us—”

“Bloody humans,” said Crowley. “Buggers do all the work of torturing themselves.” He looked sideways at Aziraphale and took a thoughtful sip of wine. “Most of the time.”

“Yes, well, one can love God and still appreciate the joys of the flesh.”

“You almost sound like you’re trying to convince yourself, angel.” Crowley set down his wine carefully; he was looking directly at Aziraphale now. “You’ve a taste for wine, a taste for fine food…” He draped an arm over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “Are there other things you have a taste for?”

_I should throw him off, I shouldn’t let him touch me_, thought Aziraphale, making absolutely no move to accomplish such a thing. “New books bound in Moroccan leather.”

Crowley laughed softly. “How could I forget about the books. Is that all?”

“I have no idea what you could possibly be asking about.”

“Putting the devil back in hell, of course. You’re an angel, isn’t that your job?” He leaned in, quite close, too close, and he smelled like not-brimstone. Aziraphale couldn’t actually place was the scent _was_, it just wasn’t hellfire, and that was arresting and unnerving and lovely and he hated it and he took a deep breath just to smell it again.

_You could just lean in_, he thought, _you could just lean in and bite his lips and then his neck and then his lips again, it’s a private room and you could miracle the door and no one would ever have to know—_

Well. Someone would. Someone always did.

Aziraphale came back to himself just enough to lean away and remove Crowley’s arm from his shoulder. “Stop tempting me, you serpent. We can’t make this Arrangement work if you try to pull your old tricks on me.”

Crowley looked genuinely confused, albeit in a wine-soaked, can’t-quite-think-straight way. “Why would I do that? Arrangement makes my life so much easier, won’t dream of doing a thing. ’M just asking questions.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, “you always are.” He shook his head and pulled a small miracle out of the air, one that would have blocked the hormones associated with human arousal if Aziraphale had been human or bothered to learn what hormones were. As it was, the miracle cleared his somewhat without cleansing any of the alcohol from his system. “Listen, Crowley, I’d best be off, lots to do—”

“It’s half eleven on a November evening, angel, what could you possibly—”

“Things! I have things!” He threw money on the table and snatched up the poem. “The forces of darkness never sleep, therefore I must occupy myself at all hours with their combat!”

Crowley held his gaze for a moment before bursting into riotous, hysterical laughter. “Do you know, angel,” he gasped, bracing his elbows on the table “I think—you almost had yourself—convinced. Just—just for a moment.” Aziraphale scowled at him, his rosebud mouth twisted up at the corner. “Come now, you were in such a good mood when we started—this was _your _idea.”

“Call it an attack of melancholia,” he said, rising from the table. “I’m glad you liked the poem.”

“Angel,” said Crowley, once Aziraphale was at the door. “Let’s do this again soon.”

“Of course.”

They did not see each other again for nearly fifty years.

_London, present day, on the other side of the end of the world_

Sun streams in through the windows of Crowley’s bedroom. Crowley rolls over, snatches a pillow from behind Aziraphale, and buries his head beneath it.

“Busy old fool, unruly sun,” Aziraphale chuckles.

Crowley rolls back over and removes the pillow. “Do you want me to make it go away, angel? Blackout curtains? Sudden rainstorm?” His tone of voice, his whole body screams _anything for you_.

“I don’t really care one way or another,” says Aziraphale, placing his book on the bedside table. “Although it’s November in London, so I think the chances of a sudden rainstorm are likely even without your intervention.” He shifts so he’s stretched out next to Crowley, draping one arm over his waist. “I like that I can do this now.”

“Mmm,” says Crowley, leaning in for a proper good-morning snog. Aziraphale is new to snogging Crowley, but he is new to neither snogging nor Crowley by themselves, and thus understands that for Crowley this response roughly translates to a resounding, “Me too.”

Several minutes later, Crowley pulls away. “What was that you said?”

“Hm?”

“Right when I woke up. Sounded familiar.”

“Oh, it’s Donne.”

“What’s done?”

“Donne, you heathen, John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s, ‘no man is an island’—”

“Perpetually randy poet.”

“Well, I suppose—”

“Oh, you know it’s true. It’s all coming back to me now—‘To His Mistress Going to Bed’, ‘The Flea’—didn’t you give me that one?”

Aziraphale sighs. “I didn’t let you keep it.”

“That’s right. That was, what late sixteenth?”

“Early seventeenth.”

“I remember you leaving, you weren’t happy, but I can’t remember why.”

“We were soused.”

“No one says soused anymore, angel. Although now you mention it, I don’t think I bothered to sober up before I hit the mattress, that’d explain it, if we drank enough for a spectacular hangover.”

“We definitely did.”

“Didn’t see you again until the Restoration. We went to the theatre.”

“_The Way of the World_.”

“Why did you leave? The night we read ‘The Flea’?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, tracing his thumb across Crowley’s cheekbone, down his jawline, along the curve of his beautiful neck, “has anyone ever told you that you are an atrociously flirtatious drunk?”

“I am never!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! ‘We would be godfathers,’ as though I don’t see that in retrospect for what it really was!”

“Give me another hundred years before you make me think about all that again, would you?”

“Fine, but there we were four hundred years ago in the back room of a tavern, drunk out of our minds, and you were _draping _yourself across me and practically _begging_—”

“For what?” asks Crowley, his voice hitching slightly.

“Well, you asked if I—if I indulged—”

“Oh come off it, angel, we’re lying naked in bed together, don’t be delicate. I asked if you fucked?”

Aziraphale gives a snort of laughter in spite of himself. “You did indeed.”

“And you left instead of answering. Typical.”

“You don’t know the things that were going through my head that night. It was either leave or pin you against a wall and do terrible delicious things, or possibly burst into flame.”

“Would have been a sight.”

“Would have ignited the Great Fire of London several decades early.”

“I meant you pinning me against a wall.” Crowley presses closer to Aziraphale, hooking a leg over his body. “_Though ill spirits walk in white, we easily know by these Angels from an evil sprite, those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright._” He guides Aziraphale’s hand to where he’s grown hard; Aziraphale circles his fingers around Crowley’s length and strokes.

“You like to say you don’t read, but then you do something like that and I know you’re lying to me.”

“_I’m _lying?” Crowley gasps, his breath becoming short as Aziraphale strokes faster. “I have nothing on you, angel. Six thousand years of convenient falsehoods, that’s you. Slow down, I don’t want to—not yet.”

Aziraphale takes his hand off Crowley’s cock and twists it in Crowley’s hair instead. “You want the truth? Shall I tell you what I wanted to do you in that back room?” Crowley nods; Aziraphale presses his thigh between Crowley’s legs and feels his cock twitch. “I wanted to drink you. I wanted to bite at your lips and suck at your mouth. I wanted to lick your neck and feel your tongue against mine and I wanted to shove you against the wall and pull down your breeches and fill my mouth with your cock.”

Crowley groans and reaches for him, and Aziraphale kisses him with all the ferocity and pent-up feelings he wanted to relieve four hundred years ago. Crowley ruts against him as they bite and suck and nearly roll right off the bed in a tangle of blankets and extremely high thread count sheets.

“That’s right, love,” Aziraphale says, holding Crowley tight against him and getting a hand around him once more, “come for me, let me see you,” and Crowley does. He then immediately disappears under the covers and hitches Aziraphale’s legs over his shoulders, and it’s not long before Aziraphale’s the one gasping and twisting against the pillows because honestly, the things Crowley can do with his tongue are positively _sinful_.

_Except that they aren’t_, he reminds himself, as Crowley slips into a doze, because this is _right_. The world spins on, free to be better, free to choose love. That’s what they’ve done.

“_I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did, till we loved_,” Aziraphale murmurs.

Crowley’s eyes blink open; one side of his mouth kicks up in a drowsy little half smile. “Fucked around, ate some oysters.” He kisses Aziraphale’s shoulder, the closest bit of skin he can reach without moving. “I can’t remember when I started to love you, angel. It’s been so long.”

“I tried to hide from it,” Aziraphale says, “but it always found me. You always found me.” He sighs a sigh that manages to sweep away all the dusty years of denying and running and fighting. “_And now good-morrow to our waking souls._” The light from the windows is softer now. The soft beat of a steady rain starts to drum against them. “There’s that storm you wanted.”

“D’you think you’ll open the shop today?”

“Highly unlikely. Is this your way of suggesting we stay here and do things that are disgustingly domestic?”

“Well, _love all love of other sights controls, and makes one little room an everywhere._”

“If you’re going to say such things, my dear, forget leaving the flat, we might not make it out of this bed.”

“Oh, angel.” Crowley leans over him for a long, lazy snog, nipping his bottom lip for good measure. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” 

**Author's Note:**

> The John Donne poems referenced in this work are, in order, "The Flea", "The Sun Rising", "To His Mistress Going to Bed", and "The Good-Morrow." I used the versions on the Poetry Foundation website for reference.
> 
> Donne's poems mostly existed only in manuscript during his lifetime, when they were passed around among his admirers (of which of course Aziraphale is one). This means we don't have composition dates for the majority of them, which is why the first section is set in sixteen-hundred-and-something.
> 
> For a glorious visual of the sucked/fucked Jacobean typeface hilarity that these two idiots are laughing about in the first half, follow [this link to the British Library website](https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-edition-of-john-donnes-poems-1633), click on "view images from this item", and go to page twenty-six of what they have digitized. (I also constantly laugh about it, for I am very scholarly and also very mature.)
> 
> This fic was partially inspired by [this tumblr post](https://seaskystone.tumblr.com/post/188067341022).
> 
> All of the slang they discuss is real and sourced/dated from Jonathan Green's slang timelines, which are a gift and also a joy unto this bleak and uncertain world.


End file.
